Independent Contractors

Safe Harbor rules for treating an employee as an independent

There are three safe harbor provisions: judicial precedent, failure of the IRS to question the status in a prior audit, and industry practice.
To qualify for Safe Harbor protection, you must satisfy just three requirements: you must have filed all required 1099-MISC forms reporting to the IRS your payments to the workers in question
you consistently treated the workers involved and others doing substantially similar work as ICs, and you had a reasonable basis--that is, a good reason--for treating the workers as Independent contractors.